M.S. Prima Vista

Background information

Type

Role

Affiliation

Manufacturer

Owner(s)

Technical specifications

Weight

8,235 tons

Guest capacity

288

At this point, I think you're the only person Mother will listen to... When I heard that Lindblum's theater ship was coming to Alexandria, I decided to sneak on board and come here no matter what. I just never expected the crew to kidnap me.

Contents

Zidane meets up with Marcus, Cinna, and Blank in the Prima Vista cargo room, and is attacked by Baku wearing a dragon mask. After the sparring match the thieves of Tantalus gather in the meeting hall and review their plan to kidnap Princess Garnet of Alexandria. After the ship docks the play begins, with Baku playing the role of King Leo, Marcus playing the lead role, and Cinna, Blank, and Zidane playing the roles of supporting characters, the latter two slipping into Alexandria Castle as part of the play to kidnap the princess.

Despite events not going as planned, Zidane gets the princess onto the theater ship, where she requests that Zidane kidnap her. Accepting, Zidane, Cinna, and a disguised Blank evade a persistent Steiner making their way onto the stage, where Garnet improvises for Princess Cornelia, and a clueless Steiner inadvertently plays Prince Schneider. When Vivi is chased onto the stage by guards and accidentally burns Garnet's cloak in an attempt to ward them off, the ruse is revealed, and Queen Brahne reacts furiously.

Prima Vista crashed.

When Steiner's assault fails, the ship pulls out of dock as Alexandria Castle fires weapons to keep it from leaving. A bomb explodes onboard, and the ship pulls out of harbor but not without taking significant damage. Unable to stay airborne, it crash lands in the Evil Forest.

Tantalus puts out the fire and removes anything they can use from the ship. After being sprayed by the seeds of the Prison Cage, Steiner and Vivi rest and recover in the ship before attempting to rescue Princess Garnet. When the Plant Brain is defeated, the ship is presumably petrified along with the rest of the forest.

A year later Tantalus returns to Alexandria to perform I Want to be Your Canary. The ship interior and the stage are identical to the airship from the year before, but whether the Prima Vista was salvaged and repaired, or if Tantalus has a new airship, is unknown. When Eiko and her new family are heading for Alexandria, it is implied that Cid either had the Prima Vista repaired, or had a new ship built for Tantalus.

If the player visits Morrid's Tower when the party first visits Dali, they can spot a miniature Prima Vista in the room. Morrid will offer to give the player the model if they can retrieve a set of three rare coffee beans for him: Moccha Coffee, Kirman Coffee and Burman Coffee. The beans are scattered across Gaia, but if the player can give them to Morrid before entering the Shimmering Island portal late in the game, Morrid will send the Mini-Prima Vista to the Tantalus hideout in Lindblum. Doing this in the latest versions of Final Fantasy IX earns the My Little Airship achievement/trophy.

The Prima Vista is the airship of Ramza bas Lexentale and his sister Alma bas Lexentale used to travel the Garlean Empire to perform their stage plays. Later, his family was exiled from the empire so they traveled to Kugane via this same airship.

The central stage of the Prima Vista is one of several new arenas. Cloud speaks here to Kuja about keeping his memories safe and their mutual reluctance to fight, and in another scene, Firion speaks to Lightning about his rose, which she says holds significance to her as well.

The arena consists of a main stage area with a flat castle prop in the background. The trap doors used to ascend to the stage in Final Fantasy IX can be seen on the floor, but are mere aesthetic features. Fighters can climb up the walls and battle on and behind the prop as well as on the stage. The edge of the stage marks the arena's borders, an invisible wall keeping characters over the ground. The North Gate and Alexandria Castle look over the stage, indicating the Prima Vista is floating somewhere near the village of Dali.

The Mallet, a reference to Cinna's hammer, is the battlegen item obtained through stage destruction in this area. It was previously the second battlegen item in Ultimecia's Castle in Dissidia.

[view·edit·purge]In English ship-naming conventions, the prefix "M.S." stands for "Motor Ship", referring to a vessel powered by an internal combustion engine. Given that Prima Vista uses Mist as its fuel source, it could also stand for "Mist Ship". Its Japanese prefix, Gekijō-tei, means "Theater Ship".

[view·edit·purge]Prima vista is Italian for "first sight." In musical notation, to perform a piece a prima vista means to read and play written music the performer has not seen before, literally "at first sight". The airship Prima Vista appears at the game's opening, perhaps having inspired the name.

In Aleport, Western La Noscea in Final Fantasy XIV, there is a winged mermaid statue nearly identical to the one serving as the figurehead of the Prima Vista.

The Prima Vista stage has "trap doors" used to raise or lower actors on the stage. In Japanese kabuki theater stage "traps", known as seri, have been commonly employed since the middle of the 18th century.

A dummied scene in the crashed Prima Vista gives the option to obey Baku and neglect looking for Garnet, but this decision haunts Zidane overnight.[2]